Cold War spy who thwarted Soviets over plane crashed in British sector in Berlin

On April 6, 1966, at the height of the Cold War, a Soviet warplane crashed into Havel Lake in the British sector of Berlin. The news quickly reached Major Angus Southwood, operations officer of ‘‘Brixmis’’, the British Commanders’-in-chief Mission to the Soviet Forces in Germany. Brixmis had been formed in 1946 under an agreement to exchange liaison missions to foster working relations between the military-occupation authorities in the respective zones.

Brixmis’ ‘‘clean status’’ concealed what soon became its principal function, however: intelligence gathering, including ‘‘stealing’’ advanced Soviet equipment and penetrating secret training areas.

On learning of the crash, Southwood, a fluent

Russian speaker, raced to the Havel, where he found the Royal Military Police, soldiers of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers and 40 Soviet troops. The Soviets were keen to get to the wreckage, of which only the tail fin was proud of the water, although there was no hope that the pilots were alive.

Alarmed at the presence of armed Soviet troops, who were soon joined by the head of the Soviet mission, Major General Vladimir Bulanov, Brigadier David Wilson, head of Brixmis, sent Southwood to get instructions from Major General Sir John Nelson.

Nelson, who had commanded the 3rd Grenadiers in World War II and then the Guards Parachute Battalion in Palestine, dictated a letter instructing Bulanov to leave with his troops within the hour. Southwood took it to the Havel and translated its contents for Bulanov. Furious, the diminutive Bulanov told Southwood, ‘‘Go back to your general and ask if he is threatening the Soviet Union.’’

Southwood did. Nelson replied brusquely, ‘‘Tell Bulanov to f... off out of Berlin. He can have a small observation party, but he cannot have armed troops in the British sector.’’ He added that the British would recover the bodies of the air crew and the aircraft and return them to the Soviets.

Bulanov backed down, but said he would remain in person with the observation party.

The aircraft was soon identified as a Yak28p (‘‘P’’ for Perechwatschik, or interceptor). Little was known about the Yak-28p, Nato codename Firebar, which was new to East Germany. Information from Allied pilots who had experienced its incursions into Berlin airspace suggested only that it could fly at 60,000ft at supersonic speeds, and that because of its evasion techniques it probably had a new and superior radar.

Wilson therefore decided to take the opportunity to examine the engines, radar and avionics in detail. He ordered the recovery operation to slow down so that the engines and electronics could be removed clandestinely by night and then flown to

England. After examination, equally secretively, they would be reunited with the wreckage. Southwood was ordered to distract Bulanov while a recovery raft was brought. Meanwhile, the Inniskillings mounted a cordon on the bank and patrols on the lake in case frogmen swam from the Soviet sector to destroy the wreckage with explosives.

During the night, while the Royal Engineers assembled a float and crane, and clearance divers started to make safe the explosive charges in the ejection seats, Southwood began a conversation with Bulanov about their respective conditions of service, the general becoming intrigued by the British scales of pay and pensions.

The conversation would continue on and off for the next seven days, with Bulanov staying the entire time at the lakeside, protesting daily at the slow speed of the recovery, to which Southwood supplied a string of plausible technical excuses.

On the evening of the second day the bodies were recovered and returned to the Soviet mission with full military honours. The Soviets were still technically an ally.

On April 13, after British and US engineers had examined the radar and engines at Farnborough, the engines were returned under cover of darkness to the Firebar’s wreckage. However, the aircraft’s novel ‘‘Skip Spin’’ nose radar was not. At midnight the raft was towed to the Soviet sector of the lake, where piece-by-piece the wreckage was handed over. The Russians protested that the aircraft was incomplete. Southwood asked what was missing, but Bulanov was hardly able to say it was a radar dish.

For his part in the incident, Southwood was awarded the MBE in 1968.

Angus Howard Southwood was born in Taunton, Somerset, to Howard and Frida Southwood. His father was an estate agent and twice mayor of Taunton. In 1948, Southwood entered Sandhurst. He was commissioned the following year into the Royal Tank Regiment and joined 5RTR in Germany, going with them to Korea in 1953 to police the newly signed armistice. There, a fellow officer told him how he had run agents in Berlin after the war, which excited his interest. On his return to England he was selected for Russian language training.

In 1957 he married Maureen Ford; they had four children, and Maureen died in 1994.

Southwood served in several mainstream intelligence staff appointments, including Kenya during the Mau Mau rebellion, before his posting to Brixmis. He left the army in

1979 to run anti-interrogation courses for pilots, special forces and military attaches, retiring finally in 1993. – The Times